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Thoughtful and concise
Ceccarelli examines three cases of scientific synthesis (or lack thereof) based on rhetorical efforts.In each of her three cases, an effort was made to merge fields of inquiry based on larger principles.The first two are success stories, and the third was a failure.Ceccarelli's analysis is tight; her examples are important and well-chosen.This book is relatively accessible for those who do not have a scientific background and are curious about the role that rhetoric plays in scientific inquiry.It is also detailed enough to provide substance for scientific professionals in the fields of biology and physics who would like to know more about the history of how these fields were constituted. ... Read more

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The object of this course of seminar lectures is, in Professor Schrodinger's words, to develop briefly one simple unified standard method, capable of dealing, without changing the fundamental attitude, with all cases (classical, quantum, Bose-Einstein, Fermi-Dirac, etc.) and with every new problem that may arise. The interest is focused on the general procedure, and examples are dealt with as illustrations thereof. It is not a first introduction for newcomers to the subject, but rather a 'repetitorium'. The treatment of those topics, which are to be found in every one of a hundred textbooks, is severely condensed; on the other hand, vital points which are usually passed over in all but the large monographs are dealt with at greater length. ... Read more

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Straight from the mind of a genius: Erwin Schrodinger on physics of reality
This is a collection of eight essays. Erwin Schrodinger's profound knowledge and deep philosophical thought are reflected in each chapter as he walks through the nature of reality as perceived by classical and quantum physics. The critical issues discussed are:Is cause - effect relationship required for physical reality? Does statistical and chance (probabilities) replace cause and effect? How quantum uncertainty affects physical reality? Could we determine the initial state of an electron? Does positivism makes sense in quantum world. These are some of the questions asked, and he tries to answer them with an easy to understand language. This work is another example of this great genius who was curious about life and the universe from a very young age.

Schrodinger credits Franz Exener, Fritz Hasenoehrl, and David Hume for the idea of departing from mechanical concept of cause and effect. He suggests statistical outcome to replace pure cause - effect relationship. But practical impossibility to determine the initial state of an electron in spacetime precludes from understanding the final (effected) state of the electron. Statistical laws are even more clearly manifested when the behavior of each individual particle is undetermined. It is likely chance (probability) lies at the root of casualty. If the behavior of each atom in every single event is determined by casualty then the details of each individual cause - effect events in a multi-electron system must be registered (positivism,) in reality only the statistical outcome is registered. Thus chance is primarily important for the observed reality. The second alternative is the compulsion of physical law and not probability (chance) and statistical outcome would determine reality. An experiment can not decide between these two possibilities because scientific reasoning will allow us either to derive chance from law or law from chance. If mass, position and velocity of an entity is precisely known at the very start, and then the future behavior is easily predicted by classical physics. But classical physics does not make sense in quantum world (subatomic level), because identical conditions at a point in time do not invariably lead to identical results, but it results in identical statistical outcome; the relative frequencies of various possible events. According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the velocity for a precisely defined position in space is not determinable. The second problem is determining the actual state of an electron. For example, it does not have a definite orbit around the nucleus that can be virtually detected, and it is in a state of perpetual motion around the nucleus without losing kinetic energy contrary to laws of classical physics. Experiments can measure only the energy level difference recorded in the form spectra. Virtual observation is essential to confirm the real existence of an object according classical physics. The exact registration of electromagnetic field generated by moving electron is precluded by Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Uncertainty principle is not an incomplete knowledge. The current view does not accept either ubiety or velocity as permanent objective realities. The word finding a particle at point A does not imply that it was there before. Our measuring device has brought it there or we disturbed its velocity while measuring and this doesn't imply it had a value. The implications of being and having are not the same even though the positivist philosophy concludes that they are one and the same.

1. Schrödinger: Life and Thought
2. What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches"
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto original series)
4. SCIENCE THEORY AND MAN
5. My View of the World
6. In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality ... Read more

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Schrödinger's influence in almost every field of science is still felt. He was a man who single-handedly reshaped thinking in cosmology, wave mechanics, statistical mechanics, unified field theories, theoretical chemistry and molecular biology. In this volume, which was prepared in 1987 to celebrate the centenary of Schrödinger's birth, leading figures in all these fields have collaborated to produce this carefully integrated and edited survey of the man and his science. Some of the contributions are biographical in nature, revealing much about the character of the man. Others deal with modern-day theories in different fields of science in which Schrödinger worked and his influence in those areas. ... Read more

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Reprint of a classical book first published in 1950. This lucid and profound exposition of Einstein's 1915 theory of gravitation is essential reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

an excellent companion
I've turned to this thin book far too many times to count. It was also a life-saver when I was learning General Relativity because of its clear and careful exposition. Schrodinger was doing this back when nobody was quite sure what the deal was with, e.g., index notation, and he took pains to lay out the benefits -- but also the limits -- of that system. See, for example, his discussion of the derivative operator, something that is almost always glossed over.

I'm in the middle of my dissertation now, and every now and then I hit on a subtlety in GR that my advisor has missed but I caught from reading this book.

Don't get thinking that this is Schrodinger's book on the unified field. It is more like the lecture notes of a very intelligent man figuring out what on Earth this truly new version of gravity is all about.

In the end of course this book is too slim to live on its own as a GR text. You will need to carry around a bigger, more comprehensive tome to get through your studies. As a handguide and emergency sense-maker, however, it has few equals.

A good text with unique information
I am an advanced undergraduate physics student who has started to go through Space-Time Structure. It seems to be a very good book, but the section introducing tensors was not as lucid as it could be. If you already know tensors or have a good book like Shaum's Outline of Tensor Calculus, then it can be a very useful introduction to the affine viewpoint of relativity that Schrodinger promotes. The discussion of nonsymmetric unified field theories is introductory and it would be necessary to look up the references it cites to get a more in depth understanding of them.

unified field theory
This book presents the results of Schroedinger's work in Ireland in which he explored the manifold of possibilities for unified field theories along the general lines pursued by Einstein. The main accomplishment was in constructing such a theory from just the connection, with metric derived as a consequence, using no ad hoc assumptions.I extended this work in my 1977 Master's thesis.While this kind of theory has gone out of style, it is still an exciting pursuit and Schroedinger's writing is clear and compelling.

Time Structure
I'm twelve right about now, and I have my own theory of time.Time (the fourth dimension) is arranged on separate lines, like thefirst dimension.The fifth dimension is arranged in time planes and the sixth in time cubes.The fourth dimension, however, is simpler than those.Imagine infinite lines in space, each stacked one on another. These we will call "time lines".From these infinite lines spread more infinite lines.We'll call these "destiny lines". Then there are more and more destiny lines branching from those destiny lines, and so on and so forth.They get very complicated.Time lines are the original paths of time.Destiny lines are the lines of time determined by what happens along the time lines.Sounds confusing?Well, anything you do creates a new destiny line.As I write this, I am creating a new destiny line.The future may be different if I didn't write this at all.Time planes are the collection of one timeline and all destiny lines spreading from it. Time cubes are the colletion of all time planes.It's kinda weird ;) ... Read more

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Recent developments show that probability methods have become a very powerful tool in such different areas as statistical physics, dynamical systems, Riemannian geometry, group theory, harmonic analysis, graph theory and computer science.

This volume is an outcome of the special semester 2001 - Random Walks held at the Schrödinger Institute in Vienna, Austria. It contains original research articles with non-trivial new approaches based on applications of random walks and similar processes to Lie groups, geometric flows, physical models on infinite graphs, random number generators, Lyapunov exponents, geometric group theory, spectral theory of graphs and potential theory. Highlights are the first survey of the theory of the stochastic Loewner evolution and its applications to percolation theory (a new rapidly developing and very promising subject at the crossroads of probability, statistical physics and harmonic analysis), surveys on expander graphs, random matrices and quantum chaos, cellular automata and symbolic dynamical systems, and others.

The contributors to the volume are the leading experts in the area. The book will provide a valuable source both for active researchers and graduate students in the respective fields. ... Read more

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A wonderful collection of letters sent to Max Born including papers from the great physisists of the 20th century. ... Read more